All Posts by Phil Nickinson

Acer today in New York announced the Iconia Tab 10 for Education. As the name implies, it's a 10.1-inch tablet running Android 5.0 Lollipop that's part of the Google for Education scheme, "bringing accessible technology and richer resources to classrooms."
The tablet's got a reinforced body (because you know kids these days, right?) and anti-slip textured coating. The display has a 1920x1200...

Acer today in New York announced a new 15-inch Chromebook — the horribly named CB3-531 — sort of a Intel Celeron-powered little brother to the Acer 910 announced earlier this year and the higher-end CB5 series. The CB3-531 promises more than 11 hours of battery life for just $199.
The display — 15.6 inches, to be exact — has a 1366x768 resolution, and the whole smash weighs 4.41 pounds and is...

Our Samsung Galaxy S6 review stands as our collective definitive take on this year's phone. But that doesn't mean it's not worth getting a second opinion. And I'm an interesting choice for it, having mostly ignored Samsung devices the past couple years.
But this year's different. This is the year I find out what I've been missing.
And so I've been using the Galaxy S6. A lot. Almost...

Following up on its first-quarter earnings, Qualcomm as part of its Q2 2015 earnings said that it's reducing its expectations for the second half of the fiscal year due to lower sales of its Snapdragon processors.
While it's largely gone unspoken in official channels, that's basically because the Samsung Galaxy S6 opted for the Samsung Exynos processor and not the Snapdragon 810, which can be...

Networks, when you think about it, come down to one thing. Coverage. If you're not covered, nothing else matters. But in partnering with two U.S. carriers — Sprint and T-Mobile — Google's Project Fi definitely has an interesting advantage.
But the question stands: Will you have Project Fi coverage where you live?
And, of course, there's a handy map for that.

Now that Google's Project Fi is officially official, the partners are starting to weigh in. And one of the first is (unsurprisingly), T-Mobile CEO John Legere.
So what did the outspoken exec and the public face behind the "Uncarrier" movement have to say?
Plenty.

If you love the idea of the HTC One M9 but can't handle everything the Sense 7 launcher throws at you, then Easy Mode might be the right choice for you.
Launchers are powerful things these days. They're your portal to all the apps and widgets and information your smartphone has at its disposal. But for some folks, the options can be a bit too much. And to that end we've seen manufacturers...

The Samsung Galaxy S6 camera is good. Darn good. But you can make it better by downloading a few extra modes from Samsung.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 camera is impressive in its own right. It shoots excellent pictures out of the box, with very little fuss. But it can do more. Much more.
Samsung actually pared back some of the features in the camera app this time around. That makes the initial...

We've been awaiting a new stylus-happy smartphone from LG, and here it is — the new G Stylo.
This is a 5.7-inch display at 720p (for a whopping 258 pixels per inch), powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 at 1.2GHz. It's got an 8-megapixel rear camera with 5MP out front, a 3,000 mAh removable battery, only 8GB of on-board storage and 1.5 GB of RAM. It's running Android 5.0 Lollipop, though, and...

The LG Watch Urbane was one of the hotter wearables we got our hands on at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. And while we're still waiting on the Android Wear device to become available — and it sounds like that's going to be sooner rather than later, because it'll be the first to have the latest Android Wear updates — LG's given us a new teaser.
If you've ever wondered...

Every now and then you're going to need to block a call. Here's how to do it on the Samsung Galaxy S6.
More and more of us are getting rid of our landlines and turning to our smartphones as our only connection. But that means the spammers and scammers and robo-calls follow. (And just wait until election season.) So there are any number of reasons why you might want to not just reject a caller...

It's a dreary Sunday here on the Gulf Coast. Or a perfect time for a few unsolicited predictions.
Some of these will be a little obvious. Some less so. All, however, come without any inside knowledge. Maybe I'll be right. Maybe I won't be. I'll sleep fine either way.
So let's get to it.

Being the first with a new tech toy often means putting up with a few hiccups. That's true, too, for Android Auto.
Some of Android's more popular phones — as in some of 2014's biggest models as well as new entries in 2015 — are not playing nicely with Android Auto. On one hand we're not all that surprised. Android Auto is a relatively new feature, and being an early adopter often means putting...

HTC's new theming community is a powerful and relatively easy way to customize your phone.
One of the more exciting (yet imperfect) features on the HTC One M9 and a major part of the new Sense 7 is the use of themes. Back in the day it would take some pretty serious hackery to theme a phone. Then custom ROMs started to bake in theming. And finally the manufacturers have gotten into the game....

We're back with some new hardware this week after the London launch event for the Huawei P8. Plus, the latest on the upcoming LG G4 after another flurry of leaks and official teasers, more on the Samsung Galaxy S6, and we'll answer even more of your questions live on air!
And, yes, MOAR STAR WARS!

If the Samsung Galaxy S6 is simply too much phone, you can scale things back (and make them bigger!) with Easy Mode.
Not everyone wants a zillion features on their phone. And even though Samsung has sort of streamlined TouchWiz in the Galaxy S6 (mostly by rearranging things or removing some options altogether), there's still a lot going on here. Maybe too much for you.
So if the default user...

Update April 17, 2015: Now that we've got a day's worth of use under our belts, well, results are mixed as to whether the Samsung Galaxy S6 battery life is still bad, or whether it's improved. A number of folks in this forum thread believe that, indeed, they're seeing better results after Samsung updated its Push app. That's pretty much par for the course, especially when you're looking at...

LG this morning on Facebook made official what LG (probably) outed over the weekend: This is the LG G4.
This marketing shot of a woman holding the G4 is the same as one used in that leaked G4 preview site, only from a different angle.
We do learn one new thing, however: the leather is apparently "vegetable-tanned."

Virtual reality once again is all the rage. We've got five VR for G3 visors to give away — and five phones to go along with them!
There are all sorts of flavors of VR out there. You've no doubt seen Google Cardboard, and LG has its own take on that with the new VR for G3. Think plastic visor that the LG G3 smartphone fits inside. Affix to your face, and you're immersed in whatever's on the...

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